Light, Life, and Love - Part 2 — Roy Hession

1 John’s Message: Walking in the Light

Will you turn to the first epistle of John, and to the second chapter? The theme of the first chapter really runs over, as we saw yesterday, to verse 2 of chapter 2. But we will read from verse 1 again.

My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. And He is the propitiation for our sins. And not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.

And hereby we do know that we know Him, if we keep His commandments. He that says, I know Him, and keepeth not His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But whoso keepeth His word, in him verily is the love of God perfected.

Hereby know we that we are in Him. He that saith, He abideth in Him, ought himself also so to walk, even as He walked. Brethren, I write no new commandment unto you, but an old commandment, which ye had from the beginning.

The old commandment is the word which ye have heard from the beginning. Again a new commandment I write unto you, which thing is true in Him and in you. Because the darkness is passing away, and the true light already shineth.

Those are alterations from the revised version. He that saith he's in the light, and hateth his brother, is in darkness even until now. He that loveth his brother, abideth in the light, and there is none occasion of stumbling in him.

But he that hateth his brother, is in darkness, and walketh in darkness, and knoweth not whither he goeth, because that darkness hath blinded his eyes. Yesterday we looked at the theme of the first chapter, and after the preliminary introduction of himself as an eyewitness, earwitness, and handwitness of eternal life, John tells us what exactly, what is the essence of the message which he has heard of God.

And it is simply that God is light, and that in Him is no darkness at all. Well now, I'm not going to, of course, summarize what we had last morning, there's no need to. But I do want to, in a sense, finish off a little bit of that theme before going on to the next.

Confession, Cleansing, and Walking in the Light

The first word of this morning which we read, and which was included yesterday, was, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not. We saw yesterday that to walk in the light, as God is in the light, was to be willing to say yes to all that the light revealed at any given moment as sin, and take it to the Lord Jesus, to confess it, that he might cleanse.

And may I say, don't ask for forgiveness of God, don't ask for cleansing. You needn't ask for it, the condition is, we're to confess. You can even ask for forgiveness and cleansing, and we are not concentrating on the one condition, which is to confess.

Don't worry about the forgiveness and cleansing, concern ourselves with the confessing. Get right to the bottom, spend time, and if we confess, God does the rest. He forgives, he cleanses from all sin through the blood of Jesus.

And this, we saw, is a walk. It's something that is often reiterated. We walk. A walk is a reiterated step in the light. And in that light, things are seen to be sin which we never saw to be sin when we were in the dark.

We get back into the dark if we don't say yes, very easily. But if we say yes, the light goes on shining, and the blood of the Lord Jesus goes on cleansing. Now, this is the point I'm coming to. It might be said that that would appear to give license to sin.

Well, it doesn't matter too much about sin. We can sin, but we can always repent. And who, I suppose, hasn't had that terrible thought in our hearts? When there's been some temptation to indulge in something, well, you say, well, I can always repent.

The blood is always there. And at first sight, it would seem that this wonderful healing message could give license to sin. Indeed, in East Africa, where God has poured out His Spirit and taught multitudes to walk with the Lord Jesus in the light, and repent and be cleansed, there have been those who have been bitterly critical of that revival movement.

And I heard of a group who used to criticize it, and they used to call it the Sin and Tell It Club. What a terrible thing. And yet, that's as they saw it. Now, John says, the result of walking in the light with God is going to be actually the very reverse.

I'm telling you these things, not that you might have a way in which you could indulge and then get back again. I'm telling you these things, that you might not sin at all. That's its end, that's its purpose.

There's a truth, of course, he himself says, if a man says he has not sinned, he makes God alive. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves. That's the raw material with which God begins. But as a man takes this simple way revealed here, it'll be the way of holiness for him.

I write these things unto you that ye sin not. It is the way not to sin. Because if a man is letting that light reveal the first beginnings of bitterness or unlove or impurity, and saying, yes, God, you're right, I'm wrong, and confessing it to Jesus and being cleansed from it, you're quite sure that those incipient things are not going to spring forth into those larger transgressions.

When a man is confessing the beginnings of jealousy, you know that's not going to issue to, in hard words, the divisions in the church. If you will turn to Psalm 19, verse 12, you will see there's something very relevant to this.

Psalm 19, verse 12, understand his errors. Cleanse thou me from secret faults. Well, now, the revised version says, cleanse thou me from hidden faults. And that, quite obviously, is the meaning. Not secret faults.

If you're keeping a thing secret, not even God can cleanse it. But there are hidden faults, hidden from ourselves. We don't see them. We haven't got enough light. Oh, God, cleanse me from those hidden faults that I've got so used to.

Then he goes on to say, keep back thy servant also from presumptuous sins, subtle sins of pride. Let them not have dominion over me. Then shall I be upright, and I shall be innocent from the great transgression.

Do you see the three sorts of sins? There are, first of all, hidden sins that are hidden from us. Then there are the subtle, presumptuous sins, sins of pride. And then there are the great transgression.

And David says, oh, God, if you will be saving me from the least, I shall be saved from the greatest. If you're saving me from those subtle things that I haven't seen, and those subtle incursions of pride, then shall I be innocent of great transgression.

And if we're walking with Jesus, letting the light show up the first beginnings, and humble enough to say, yes, it's right, Lord, and I'm wrong, then shall I be innocent of great transgression. A man who's confessing impure thoughts, and being washed from them, and hating them, and turning from them as they come, isn't likely to commit adultery or fornication, is he?

The man who's repenting of coveting what belongs to somebody, and putting it in the light, isn't likely to go and steal it, is he? God is saving him much earlier on. As it says in one of the old hymns, God is healing the tide at its beginning.

And I don't know any other way of practical holiness than this way. Those that know how to walk in the light with God, not those who adhere to a formula and turn on the tap, but those in real honesty who know what it is to face God momentarily, about the things that come, they are the ones who know what real holiness is.

This is the way of holiness. And the amazing thing is it's available to poor people. It's the way of gospel holiness. It isn't coming up to a standard which only makes you despair. This is gospel holiness.

On the level where you live, the light shows you, but grace offers the remedy. And the amazing thing is, as you repent of the negative, God pours in the positive. As you repent of worry, God brings in faith.

As we repent of unlove for a brother, God pours in love. Christ in that place is made to us all we need. Be assured, this is the way of holiness. And I believe what I've just said may throw some light on a difficult verse later on, chapter 3, verse 9.

Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin. Now that would appear to be a difficult verse because those that are born of God are often repenting and confessing sin. And yet here it says they do not commit it.

Well, I believe the word commit means practice. They don't practice sin, but they repent of it. And I believe the answer is in this that we've tried to say, that this is the way in which we are set free from the dominion of things that otherwise would grow into larger transgressions and spoil our fellowship with God and divide us from brethren.

I can only tell you that in my experience of deep fellowship with men who've gone so much further than I have, and who know so much more of practical holiness than I do, I've noticed this. The further they are on with God, and the more of holiness and sweetness one sees in them when you get close enough to them, the quicker they are to see sin and repent of it.

They're not the ones who are repenting less, but they're the ones who repent more. And yet they're the ones upon whom the grace of God is so manifest and whom he's using. And in fellowship with such, as I've traveled with such in other parts, it's been like living with somebody in a greenhouse.

You know exactly what's going on. The blood of Christ is doing this continuous work in them. And sometimes I'm so challenged, and a brother says, well, God showed me this and showed me that today, and he's got a testimony as to grace reaching him there.

Well, I said, well, I don't know. I'm sure I've had all that, but I never saw it. I was oblivious. I thought I was quite impervious to those things. Well, here's a man of God, so close that the light shows him things that perhaps doesn't always show me because I may not always be as much in the light as I should be.

So this is the way. I want to tell you this simple way produces those positive results of love and sweetness, holiness, and power for service and everything else. This is the way. Now we turn to verse 3, and here we find John saying, Hereby we do know that we know him if we keep his commandments.

Testing Christian Profession by Obedience

Now, I believe now we're really approaching the main message that John has. There are two sets of key words that run through this epistle. I can bring you six very similar ones. Look at chapter 1, verse 6.

If we say, chapter 1, verse 8, if we say, chapter 1, verse 10, if we say, chapter 2, verse 4, He, that Seth, chapter 2, verse 6, He, that Seth, chapter 2, verse 9, He, that Seth. John's great burden is with those that say they have fellowship with God and are walking in darkness.

His concern is that of a false profession. I don't mean to say a man says he's converted when he isn't converted. He may well be converted, but he may appear and give the impression of being a certain type of Christian, and may even think so himself when in reality he isn't.

Now, very often as you read the epistles in the New Testament carefully, you can gather what was the need of the people to whom they were first written. And there's no doubt at all in that early church there was great need.

Let's not go on talking about the early church and the Pentecostal church and the Church of the Acts as the ideal church. It was far from ideal. Nearly every one of the epistles written to that church were corrective epistles, and certainly John's ones.

You've only got to read the second epistle of Peter and the epistle of Jude to realize there was a state of things in that excitable early church that we don't have today. Of course, I readily agree, as Martin Lloyd-Jones once said, that the errors were the errors of revival.

There was life, and the life went off in all sorts of directions. Today, of course, there isn't so much life. There's not so much movement, and there may not be so many excesses. There may be much more appearance of unity sometimes, only because we're frozen together.

But that early church, it was an excitable church. Pentecost was new and continuing, and in that excitable church, there were certain things that always happened. When the saints get excitable, praise the Lord for being excited, we ought to be, but there are always some errors.

And, you know, flesh can get in to an excitable church, into an excitable group. Flesh can get in when there are the gifts of the Spirit and so on, and we can get wrapped up with excitement of things, and the deep moral implications of the Gospel can be lost sight of.

You don't find the apostles ever writing to stir up excitement. You don't even find them greatly concerned that they should seek the more spectacular gifts of the Spirit. They don't deny them, and they're not concerned to encourage them.

They're just one of those phenomena that happen in periods of great blessing and excitement in the church's history. No, no, they're concerned with the moral foundations, and it is possible when there's excitement to forget that fact, and it was apparently true.

Here, in fact, things in that church to which John wrote and Jude wrote and Peter wrote, there was flagrant immorality masquerading under superior spirituality. You can read it, extraordinary. Now, apparently, John, from his island home in Patmos, was concerned about the church, the Christians in their various assemblies scattered over Asia Minor, that there was an easy profession of professing of great things, but it wasn't based on, it didn't have a real moral basis.

They were those that said, but their actual actions didn't go there. And so it is, this is one of the things that have occasioned, I believe, John's letter. And so he would challenge us about our profession, about what we think we are as Christians.

Well, of course, that challenge could make you doubt. Well, I say I'm a Christian, I say I'm walking with the Lord, but maybe things aren't right with me, and perhaps I'm not right at all. And so it is, along with that set of keywords, you have another set of keywords to balance them.

Here by we know. One set is, he that saith, but doesn't do, is a liar. He's not there at all, don't you believe it, says John. Well, how do you know where you are then? Here by we know. And this comes again and again.

Chapter 2, verse 3. Here by we know that we do know him, if we keep his commandments. Chapter 2, verse 5. Here by we know that we are in him. Chapter 3, verse 14. We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren.

Virtually the same phrase, here by we do know. Chapter 3, verse 19. And here by we know that we are of the truth, and shall assure our hearts before him, whensoever our hearts condemn us. Yes, if an honest, searching heart is subjected to these great challenges of John, he may not know where he is.

And his heart may condemn him, and he may begin to doubt. But, here by we do know that we are of the truth, and shall assure our hearts before him, whensoever our hearts condemn us. A revised version.

Chapter 3, verse 24. And here by we know that he abideth in us by the spirit which he hath given us. Chapter 4, verse 13. Here by we know that we dwell in him, and he in us. Chapter 5, verse 2. By this we know we love the children of God, when we love God and keep his commandments.

And so he would, on the one hand, challenge our profession, and test it as to whether we are really right with God and our brother. And lead us to doubt our profession, if we are not. On the other hand, he gives us evidences, which when discerned in the life of the child of God, assures his heart, whensoever his heart would condemn him.

Three Forms of Assurance

Now that leads me to say that years ago I heard it helpfully set out that there are three forms of assurance of salvation. Now I suppose we realize there is a difference between salvation and the assurance of salvation.

I mean to say, on that Passover night, there were some who were under the blood, with the blood sprinkled outside, but they had no assurance that they were going to be all right. They were full of fears.

They were worried. The eldest son wouldn't go to bed that day. He was trembling what was going to happen to him at midnight. There was another house where the blood was outside, and the boy went very peacefully to bed.

He had no doubts as to his salvation, as to his safety. I've often asked children, I say, which of those two was safer? And so often they say, well, the one who was sure. Oh no. They were equally safe, equally under the blood.

But some, the first, hadn't got the assurance of salvation. They were there, did they, but only realized it. Grace was protecting them. He would hover over them and not suffer the destroyer to come into them.

But they went in the joy of it, because they went sure. And the others, they were saved, but they were also sure they were saved. Now, there are three forms of assurance, it's been said, and I think this is so helpful.

There's, first of all, external assurance. At least, the ground of our assurance is based on something external. It's based on the word and work of Christ to sinners. God has said it, it must stand. Someone has put it this way, Jesus did it, God says it, I believe it, and that settles it.

Jesus did it, long ago. The only thing that impedes my entrance into heaven is sin, and that's what Jesus put away. By the sacrifice of himself, as we heard, the sword is sheathed. Jesus did it, God says it, and he says he's satisfied with that.

If he's satisfied with that on your behalf, why can't you be? All right, then I believe it, and that settles it. You don't depend on your feelings. There was a time when I depended on my feelings. When I felt up, I felt, well, I really am a Christian.

When my feelings disappeared, I wasn't quite sure. I was casting the anchor inside the boat, and it didn't hold. You've got to cast it outside the boat on something gloriously external to yourself. The unbreakable promises of God.

My sheep are mine, and I give unto them eternal life, and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. And my friend, when you realize you became his before the foundation of the world, in the purpose of God, before he had done any good to deserve it, or any ill to forfeit it, oh, how secure is the man who's learned to find his peace in what Christ did and the promises of God external.

And that, I would say, is the first and the most basic. But then there's a second form of assurance, and that is internal. And we find that in Romans 8, verse 16. 8, 16. The Spirit himself beareth witness with our spirit that we are the children of God, and if children, then heirs.

The Holy Spirit comes to whisper that you are indeed a child of God, that God is indeed your Father, that heaven is indeed your home. And oh, what blessed seasons of rejoicing in the Lord do not the children of God know when the Holy Spirit assures them by an internal witness of the love of God for them, of their security, of God being their Father.

This isn't some advanced experience, the witness of the Spirit. It's the happy, blessed experience of the merest believer in Jesus. You ought to know it. I don't want you to start hunting round for it and saying, well, if I haven't got that, I don't know where I am.

Externally, you may know the promises of God, but as you take them at their face value, there's an internal witness within your heart. Yes, you don't trust on feelings, but God doesn't leave you without them.

My goodness, no. You have them all right. Beware lest you depend on them, and if there's a variation, you think, well, everything's gone wrong. Not necessarily. Maybe you've heard of the old illustration of someone looking down a well at night, and in the still waters down there, they could see a perfect reflection of the moon up above, and then someone drops a stone.

Oh, you say, the moon's all broken to pieces. I know, the moon's still there. It's just the reflection of it that's being disturbed. Many things will disturb it. Sin, of course, will disturb it, but even when that's so, your relationship to God hasn't been forfeited.

You're still his, though the happy consciousness has been broken. Sometimes other things may disturb it. Even a bad headache, you may not have quite so much of the joy of the Lord. Oh, where am I? No, no.

Just a little disturbance of the water's surface, the moon's still there. But oh, God wants us and does give us this witness of the Spirit within our hearts. Sometimes a light surprises the Christian while he sings, it is the Lord that rises with healing in his wings.

Don't you get it? Sometimes when you sing, you almost feel ready to take off for glory. You wouldn't take the archangel Gabriel to come and tell you that you were a child of God. You don't need him, you know it.

Not only externally, but internally. But there is a third way of assurance, and that is not only external, not only internal, but evidential. Please turn the cassette over now. Do not fast-wind it in either direction.

Evidences of Assurance in a Changed Life

This is the sort of assurance that John is speaking about. Hereby we do know that we are in him and he in us. And then he points to certain evidence. You see, combating as he wants to, this looseness, this flippant, this excitableness that says one thing and does the other, it obviously isn't in his orbit, at this particular moment, to speak so much about the first two.

He wants people to have evidence. And that is what John is talking about, the evidence. And right the way through this epistle, there are mentioned the evidences that he is in us and we in him. And, although it may shake us somewhat, he says, if you can't see them, you may well wonder where you are.

Well, there's a glorious balance in scripture, isn't there? Well, now, the one we've just mentioned, the first one here, is hereby we know that we know him. How do you know that you know him? Evidences have we.

And he says, if we keep his commandment. Well, now, as you read through this epistle, and we shall be doing that, of course, together, it's quite clear what his commandment is, or what they are. He talks about it's no new commandment.

You've known it all along, and yet it is new, when it comes to you in living power. And, of course, when he talks about the new commandment, we are reminded of what the Lord said in John 13, 34, a new commandment I give unto you.

And yet it's an old, old one. It was there in the Old Testament as well as in the New. That ye love one another. And, summed up, that is the commandment, the word that we are to keep. And that keeping of his word is an evidence that we know him.

I don't know that in these days we have such a struggle to get the assurance of salvation as our fathers did. I don't know why it is. I believe there's a sense in which the truths of the gospel have been more elucidated in the early days of Bunyan and people like that.

The gospel had only been recently recovered from the morass of the Middle Ages. Maybe we get it a bit too easily. Those men weren't always sure. They had to be assured. And there were many times when their hearts condemned them.

And so we read, and hereby we know that we are the truth. And shall assure our hearts before him whensoever our heart condemns. Maybe we ought to have some more healthy wondering. Well, I expect we do.

If not about our eternal salvation, we have many a wondrous to our present relationship with the Lord. How it is, I know I do. And what a wonderful thing it is to whisper, hear him whisper. There's evidence enough, dear child.

Just look back to where you were. Just remember the troubles. And look how grace has led you on. Is that not evidence that you indeed have become an object of that grace? That grace is working in you and you shall pass from death into life.

Of course, it isn't the only ground of assurance it needs. The three. That is a very, very important one. Well, now, love. And that becomes, of course, as we shall see, the great theme of later chapters.

Love as the Evidence of Knowing God

Hereby we know that we know him if we keep his commandments. And his commandments are really only one. Now, Paul says the same, Romans 13, verse 9. Romans 13, verse 8. No man anything but to love one another.

And we mustn't let the debt remain undischarged. For he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law. You don't have to tick off all the points of the law that you're keeping them, provided you love others.

For this thou shalt not commit adultery. Thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not bear false witness. Thou shalt not covet. And if there be any other commandment, it is briefly comprehended in this saying, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.

Love worketh no ill to his neighbor. Therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law. We were thinking of that rich young ruler the other night. And the Lord said, well, have you kept the commandments? And he enumerated them, the ones we've read.

And I noticed that some time ago, I got it from somewhere, I jotted it in my Bible. Do not commit adultery. That is, do not take another's husband. Do not kill. Do not take another's life. Do not steal.

Do not take another's property. Do not bear false witness. Do not take another's reputation. If I'm concerned for the other. You know, the antidote to adultery, the adultery is love. The numerology is, oh, as long as there's love you can do it.

No, no, it's love that forbids it, that stops you. Love for whom? Oh, not for that woman or man, but for their partner. If I love him, if I love them with cowardly love, would I want to steal that one and come between them?

It's love for others that prevents me pinching what belongs to them. And they don't know where it's gone. And you know, you've got no idea of the terrible grief that is caused by stealing. You've got no idea how bothered they are, how worried.

The grief to others caused by stealing covers all that. And criticising and taking away another's reputation, if you love that brother, you won't do it. And so, hereby we don't know that we know him if we keep his commandments.

And his commandments are not grievous, they're comprised in one. Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. And that is to be, as we shall see, one of the evidences that we have ourselves, passed from death into life, is that we who were unloved and unloving, now begin to have evidences of love for our brother, because we have been loved of God.

Understand, however, that loving your brother is not the way to the new birth. You can try to be more loving, it won't bring you one little bit nearer heaven. It won't bring you into the new birth. But having found at the feet of Jesus new birth, then love for one's brother is the evidence.

And so he goes on, in verse 9, He that saith he is in the light, here he is, attacking this false profession, in the light of this. He that saith he's in the light, and hateth his brother, is in darkness even until now.

Now you might think that perhaps you don't hate anybody. But you know in scripture there's nothing in between, it's either black or white. It's either love or hate. There's nothing in between. And if it isn't love, then the Holy Spirit says call it hate.

And of course there is one passage, more than any other passage in the New Testament, that tells us what love is. That great passage in 1 Corinthians 13. Therefore hate is simply the opposite of 1 Corinthians 13.

And therefore we can look at 1 Corinthians 13, decide what is the opposite, and put the opposite in that verse. And it really begins to come very close to us. It has indeed to my own heart this morning, as I've been going through it.

The Characteristics of Love and the Opposite of Hatred

Look at 1 Corinthians 13. Charity. Verse 4. That's the old English word for love. I don't know it's out of date. We talk about a person being charitable or not very charitable. That wasn't a very charitable remark.

You didn't deal with him with much charity, did you? So the old word charity still lingers with us, and it still has the right meaning, though doubtless we ought to read here, as the New Versions do, love.

Love suffereth long, that is, is patient and is kind. The opposite of that is impatience and unkindness. So we turn back to the first epistle of John again and put that in. And what do we find? He that saith he's in the light and is impatient with his brother and unkind to his brother is in the darkness even until now.

You see, before we go further with this, the rationale for these failures in my relationship to my brother putting me wrong with God is this. I used to think that my relationship to God was a two-point circuit, God and me.

And provided there was no break in that circuit, the divine current of life would go on flowing. But I've since discovered that that is a very inadequate conception. As I read John's epistle, I discover my relationship to God is not a two-point circuit, it's a three-point circuit.

God, me, my brother. And the divine current has to run around three points. I may imagine that I'm very consecrated, having my quiet times and doing the right thing with regard to God, but if there's a break in the circuit between my brother and me, the whole current stops in any case.

And I'm as much wrong with God as I am with my brother. And so we read, if there isn't love, if there's the opposite of love, he that saith he is in the light and is impatient and unkind to his brother, whoever that may be, the one across your path, is in the darkness even until now.

What else does it say in 1 Corinthians 13? Love envieth not, that is, is not jealous of his brother. And so we go back to the other passage, he that saith he is in the light and is jealous of his brother is in the darkness even until now.

I confess myself to have said I'm in the light. One of the things that sometimes come into my heart all too often is jealousy. Sometimes I don't know why I'm in the dark. I can't find out what's gone wrong.

I've come to say to myself, Roy, if in doubt, it's probably jealousy. And if I'm in doubt, it nearly always is, because jealousy can be a very hidden thing. You can only see it by its symptoms. You are criticising the other person, not appreciating the other person.

The real thing is we're jealous. He that saith he is in the light and is jealous of his brother, he's in the darkness even until now, and I know for one that that darkness can be a darkness that can be felt.

Misery, indeed. We go on. He that saith he's in the light, and we go back to 1 Corinthians 13, love vaunteth not, itself is not puffed up. Love doesn't boast and isn't proud. But he that saith he's in the light and is proud and boasting and making the others feel small, because that's what boasting does, he's in the darkness even until now, there's a break in the current, in the circuit.

It goes on to say, love doth not behave itself unseemly, that is not rude. Therefore he that saith he's in the light and is rude to his brother. Just plain rude, that's all. He's in the darkness even until now.